Nawang Phuntsog is a
professor with the Department of Elementary, Bilingual, and Reading
Education, School of Human Development and Community Service, California
State University, Fullerton.

A rising tide of studies with statistical
descriptions has inundated the multicultural literature in the past two
decades. One wave of study strongly calls for the restructuring of
teacher preparation programs to address the increasing cultural and
ethnic diversity of public school student populations (Hodgkinson, 1996;
National Center for Education Statistics, 1994 ). Several other studies
point out the disparity between a homogenous teaching population and
increasing heterogeneity of racial, ethnic, cultural, and social class
of school student populations (Bennett, 1995; Gomez ,1996). A burgeoning
number of studies also indicate the discrepancy in drop-out and academic
failure rates between students from the dominant and the dominated
cultures (Clark,1989; Jacob & Jordan, 1987; Yates, 1987). Another
group of studies highlight the fact that cultural mismatch between
teachers and ethnically diverse students contributes to the differences
in school success (Au & Mason, 1981; Erickson, 1987; Ogbu, 1987).
Yet, according to John U. Ogbu (1987), the cultural mismatch factor most
negatively impacts the academic performance of African-American and
Hispanic students who are the largest minority groups in public schools.
All these studies invariably call for restructuring of teacher
preparation programs so that prospective teachers have skills,
attitudes, and knowledge to meet the challenges of culturally diverse
school environments.

Studies based on the cultural differences
concept make the assumption that academic achievement of students from
culturally diverse backgrounds will improve if schools and teachers make
an attempt to ensure that classroom instruction is conducted in a manner
responsive to the student’s home culture. Modification of classroom
instruction to respond positively to home culture of students is known
in research literature as culturally compatible ( Jordan , 1987),
culturally congruent (Au & Kawakami, 1994), culturally responsive
(Erickson, 1987), and culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1990). The
publications of Schooling and Language Minority Students: A
Theoretical Framework (1991, 2nd edition) and Teaching Diverse
Population: Formulating a Knowledge Base (1994) have contributed to
the importance of culturally responsive teaching as a critical aspect of
enhancing the learning of all students. Writings in these books
reverberate with cacophonous calls to recognize the centrality of social
and cultural factors in school learning, and the urgent need for schools
to develop culturally responsive content and process to ensure equity
and excellence for all students.

The dramatic shift in the demographic
landscape of the United States is more pronounced in public schools than
anywhere else. For example, according to Brenda L. Martin (1997), Oak
View School in Huntington Beach, California, with a total student
population of 609, included one Asian, one Pacific Islander, one
Filipino, 529 Hispanic, one Black, and 14 whites in its 1995 racial and
ethnic survey. The cultural and racial diversity of student population,
in and by itself, is not the problem; but the way educators and
community members respond to it positively or negatively will impact the
self-esteem and academic success of students from varied cultural
backgrounds. The startling changes in student population has, therefore,
challenged schools and educators to find creative ways to work with
culturally diverse students to ensure educational quality and equity for
all.

Teacher preparation programs have
responded to cultural differences studies and demographic imperatives in
a variety of ways. For example, inclusion of multicultural education
courses and provision of certain direct cross-cultural student teaching
experiences are intended to help develop prospective teachers with
skills, attitudes, and knowledge to function effectively in schools.
Yet, the current conceptualization and implementation of mutlicultural
teacher education is predicated on questionable assumptions and
premises. For example, multicultural education as a separate course is
assumed to be sufficient to address a plethora of diversity issues. This
may include anything from the ethnic identity of a student in a rural
remote town in Montana to that of transforming curriculum for social
justice and for challenging cultural hegemony. Though teacher diversity
programs may, at their best, barely scratch one’s deeply rooted
cultural beliefs, students are expected to undergo profound personal
transformation that may then enable them to question and challenge their
long-held views about school teaching and learning. The current
conceptualization of teacher preparation for cultural diversity seems to
exist on an optimistic plane that assumes that a single dose of
multicultural education is effective to prepare the teaching force to
narrow the academic achievement and drop-out gaps between students from
dominant and dominated cultures.

Today’s foremost challenge in education
is to create learning environments that maintain the cultural integrity
of every child while enhancing their educational success (Wlodkowski
& Ginsberg, 1995). Being closest to learners, classroom teachers are
in a critical position to provide learning experiences that will ensure
cultural integrity and academic success for all children. At the
classroom level, culturally responsive teaching essentially involves
using students’ cultural experiences and background as a medium for
helping them learn important academic skills of reading, writing, and
computing. For example, different versions of Cinderella fairy tales
found in such cultural traditions as Vietnam, the Philippines, Africa,
and the Middle East can be used in a variety of classroom activities to
study the differences and similarities of characters, themes, values,
and perspectives. Children can then write their own Cinderella story as
a culminating experience. Inclusion of children’s literature from
different cultural traditions provides learning opportunities for many
children to affirm their cultural experiences and help enrich the
learning of all children. More importantly, this type of activity can
help children reduce and challenge prejudicial and stereotypical
attitudes they may bring into classrooms.

Teachers can not be expected to perform
miracles. Undoubtedly, the public schools’ ability to meet this
challenge for all students depends on the way teachers are prepared with
skills, attitudes, and knowledge necessary to enhance their ability to
undertake the gigantic responsibility of creating classroom environments
appropriate for achieving excellence and equality of learning for all
children. Renewal of the teacher education curriculum is indeed a
powerful way to ensure that teachers are prepared effectively to respond
positively to culturally diverse students.

A constructive approach in this direction
is then to identify crucial issues that educators think are important
for preparing teachers for cultural diversity. The interactive and
context-driven nature of teaching requires educators to take into
account the students’ social-cultural environments in which their
schooling occurs. There is then a crucial need to prepare teachers with
cultural knowledge and competencies to adapt curriculum and instruction
for culturally responsive classroom practices as a way to enhance the
learning of all students in culturally diverse schools. The purpose of
this article is, therefore, (a) to identify critical issues in preparing
teachers for cultural diversity, (b) to profile what educators consider
to be the crucial aspects of a culturally responsive pedagogy, and
finally (c) to propose a holistic framework for integrating personal
culture, microculture, and macroculture into culturally responsive
teaching practice. The inclusion of different levels of culture is
intended to show their relationships with the five important aspects of
culturally responsive teaching practices.

Approach of the Study

The primary purpose of this inquiry is to
bring a sharp focus on what educators perceive to be the critical
aspects of "Culturally Responsive Teaching." Using culturally
responsive teaching as descriptors, the researcher was able to locate
from the ERIC database 13 documents published during the years 1992 to
1997. These documents consist of : two reports, three conference papers,
five journal articles, two general papers, and one book, as listed
following:

In their book, Diversity and
Motivation: Culturally Responsive Teaching, Raymond J. Wlodkowski
and Margery B. Ginsberg (1994) propose a framework intended to assist
public school educators in thinking about culturally responsive
pedagogy. Four motivational conditions constitute their conception of a
culturally responsive teaching framework. What follows is a brief
description of this framework:

1. Establishing inclusion refers
to those norms, procedures, and structures that are carefully blended
together to promote a learning environment in which students and
teachers feel respected by and connected to one another.

2. Developing attitude relates
to those norms, procedures, and structures that create, through
relevance and choice, a favorable disposition among learners and
teachers toward the learning experience.

3. Enchancing meaning refers to
those norms, procedures, and structures that expand, refine, or
increase the complexity of what is learned in a way that matters to
learners, includes their values and purposes, and contributes to a
critical consciousness.

4. Engendering competence refers
to those norms, procedures, and structures that create an
understanding that learners are effective in learning something of
personal value. (p.20)

This framework was used in this inquiry
to identify issues, norms, procedures, and structures considered crucial
for culturally responsive teaching.

Issues and Problems of Culturally
Responsive Teaching

The continuing upsurge of interest among
researchers and educators in developing educational strategies designed
to bolster academic achievement of culturally and linguistically
subordinated student populations is beyond any doubt. For example, the
California State Department of Education has published a series of
handbooks intended to help teachers identify effective ways to work with
children of specific languages and ethnicity. Handbooks , in and by
themselves, are not necessarily a cure-all educational tonic. Worse
still, teachers may reduce the solution of under achievement of minority
students to merely finding the "right" teaching methods,
strategies, or prepackaged curricula purported to work with students who
have historically not benefited from regular mainstreamed instruction (Bartolome,
1994). Another closely related concern is that such strategies or
approaches that work well with one language and ethnic minority students
may be perceived to be effective with another group (Vogt, Jordan, &
Tharp, 1987). This "one size fits all" mentality runs the
great risk of stereotyping subordinated students and engenders
instructional recipes that quickly reduce the complexity of dealing with
cultural and linguistic diversity to a technical method issue.

Avoiding the pitfalls of what Lilia I.
Bartolome (1994) calls "methods fetish" is Wlodkowski and
Ginsberg’s (1995) conception of culturally responsive teaching
"that crosses disciplines and cultures to engage all
learners." Wlodkowski and Ginsberg’s comprehensive definition of
culturally responsive teaching "accommodates the dynamic mix of
race, ethnicity, class, gender, region, religion, and family that
contributes to every student’s cultural identity" (p.17). A
growing number of researchers have brought to the forefront the central
role of culture in school learning. Similarly they have asserted in
unequivocal terms that one can no longer ignore its powerful influence
on student learning under the pretext of maintaining high academic
standards or treating everyone alike in a color-blind approach. On the
other hand it is important to emphasize that we are all victims of
cultural ethnocentrism that seriously impedes one’s ability to view
values, norms, and behavior from different cultures as viable ways of
perceiving reality. Hence cultural ethnocentric outlooks of teachers may
blind them to their own negative assumptions or stereotypes that they
may hold toward different cultural groups. It is crucial to provide
teachers with powerful learning experiences designed to bring about
profound personal transformation needed to began the process of becoming
culturally responsive teachers.

Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (1995) propose an
intrinsic motivational framework for teachers that recognizes the
importance of linking content to the cultural backgrounds of students as
a way to enhance student involvement while maintaining their cultural
integrity. An effective culturally responsive teaching should be
characterized by the following: respect for diversity; engage motivation
of all learners; create a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning
environment; derive teaching practices from principles that cross
disciplines and cultures; and promote justice and equity in society (Wlodkowski
& Ginsberg, 1995).

Tonya Huber (1991) asserts that
"culturally responsible content and approaches recognize the
influences of culture, language, ethnicity, race, gender, religion,
exceptionality, socioeconomic level, and home environment" (p.4) as
a way to reduce cultural discontinuity between students’ ethnic
heritage and school culture. Huber (1991) further believes that in a
culturally responsive environment teachers are "not content to
teach about ethnic groups—they are responsive to the cultural identity
of the learner, as well" (p.3). An extensive literature review led
Martin (1997) to concur with other researchers that culturally
responsive teaching acknowledges and acts upon the research that has
found "that changing the structure of the classroom interactions
and activities, so that they are more compatible with the home cultures
of the children, promotes classroom learning" (p.15) . It would be
misleading if one considers that merely tinkering with classroom
structure will ensure academic success for language minority students.
The societal context is vitally linked to the process of achieving
empowerment for ethnic minority students.

Moving from an assimilationist
"melting pot" perspective to a culturally pluralist
perspective demands that schools make profound changes in the way
teachers views culture, learning, language, and teaching. A key part of
cultural pluralism is the assumption that diverse languages, cultures,
and perspectives are an asset, not a liability. However, Rebecca Novick
(1996) makes the observation that "the factory model school, with
the goal of using educational technology to stamp a uniform education on
all students is deeply entrenched in American educational thinking
" (p.61). Reiterating the culturally and politically constructed
nature of schools, David Tyack and William Tobin (1994), as cited by
Novick (1996), view schools as the "historical product of
particular groups with particular interest and values at a particular
time" (p.478).

Cultural transmissionist and transformist
perspectives on the schools’ function are inseparable from larger
political, cultural, educational, and social argument of melting pot and
salad bowl ideology. Todd Gitlin (1995), as cited by Novick (1996),
states poignantly the assimilationist perspective when he writes that
"The mission of cultural institutions is to pass the heritage on,
not trade it away for a mess of multicultural pottage" (p.486). At
the other end of the spectrum is the pluralist ideology captured in the
words of poet Octavio Paz (cited by Novick, 1996):

What sets the world in motion is the
interplay of differences, their attraction and repulsion. Life is
plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and
peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures,
progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single
civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and
technique, improvishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that
becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a
possibility of life. (1976)

Like a garden adorned with many colorful
flowers of all shapes and sizes, human experience is greatly enriched
and expanded in a multicultural society when schools become
"respectful places—more than just mere civility" for all
children (Scherer, 1997). An authentic multicultural education must
include an on-going renewal of school curriculum as a powerful and
constructive approach to affirm and reflect the cultural diversity of
the nation.

Jim Cummins’ (1986) theoretical
framework is useful for analyzing the invariability of minority students’
academic failure and their school success. Drawing from patterns of
minority school failure from an international perspective, Cummins
(1986) begins his framework with the recognition that "power and
status relations between minority and majority groups exert a major
influence on school performance" (p.21). An important assertion of
his thesis is that minority groups’ "insecurity and ambivalence
about the value of their own cultural identity as result of their
interactions with the dominant group" (p.23) contribute to their
academic difficulties in schools. The ability of teachers to alter this
relationship will greatly be enhanced if teachers and educators examine
their personal beliefs and values to seek redefinition of the ways they
interact with ethnic children and communities. It may be safe to assume
that Cummins’ (1986) framework has given impetus for many subsequent
research studies assessing and analyzing teachers’ ability to function
effectively with diverse students.

Teacher preparation programs have been
criticized for their inability to prepare teachers effectively to
address varied needs of culturally heterogeneous student population. In
his foreword to Teaching Diverse Populations: Formulating a Knowledge
Base, McPhail (1994) highlights the urgency of this issue when he
writes:

The knowledge base for teacher
preparation should be solidly founded on what is known about teaching
diverse populations. Cultural diversity is not a problem nor should it
be an appendage to teacher preparation programs, but rather, should be
the yarn from which such programs are developed. Formulating a
knowledge base requires a synthesis of existing knowledge about
teaching in diverse populations. (p. vii)

Novick (1996) conjectured that "at
the heart of argument about the means and ends of schooling is the
question: What kind of society do we want?" (p.62). Teacher
education program can best serve these goals by careful attention to its
entire structure and process of teacher preparation as a way to gauge
their effectiveness in educating teachers for diversity.

Current Literature about Culturally
Responsive Practices

Culturally responsive teachers recognize
the fact that those students who do not feel valued in school settings
are likely to develop lower self-esteem, alienating them further from
school learning. Validating cultural experiences of minorities in
schooling process and content is viewed as a way to affirm minority
students’ identity. It can also serve to make multiple ways of seeing
and perceiving a viable experience of all in this culturally diverse
society. Culturally responsive teaching and content then
"recognizes the influence of culture, language, race, gender, or
other characteristics" (p.5) that mark children as different from
the majority (Huber, 1991). How do teachers create a caring, safe, and
secure learning environment that ensures that cultural and linguistic
diversity are the foundations of their pedagogy?

Several culturally responsive practices
and strategies have been identified in the research literature reviewed
for this inquiry. In their framework, Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (1995)
conceptualize culturally responsive teaching in terms of four
motivational conditions that include: (1) establishing inclusion; (2)
enhancing positive attitude; (3) enhancing meaning; and (4) engendering
competence. Two criteria guide the process of ensuring relevance and
significance of each condition in the framework. Additionally, the
framework identifies norms, procedures, and structures that are intended
to help teachers and educators develop and implement culturally
responsive learning environments.

Although Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (1995)
acknowledge "a humble sense of self-scrutiny" of teachers to
be an essential aspect of " creating learning experiences that
allow the integrity of every learner to be sustained," the
framework does not clearly provide norms, procedures, or structure for
self-introspection. However, the criteria of relevance and choice, along
with development of norms, procedures, and structure, is intended to
help students develop positive attitudes. For example, making choices in
content and assessment methods based on students’ experiences, values,
needs, and strengths is expected to engender students’ positive
attitudes. In this structure the lack of provision for self
introspection of teachers is the most serious drawback, as teacher bias
and prejudice may go unchallenged.

Francesina R. Jackson (1994) suggests a
seven-step strategy to build culturally responsive teaching. William G.
Sparks (1994) has modified and used these strategies successfully in
teaching physical education. Jackson’s seven steps include: (1)
building trust; (2) becoming culturally literate; (3) building different
methodological approaches; (4) using effective questioning techniques;
(5) providing effective feedback; (6) analyzing instructional materials;
and (7) establishing positive home-school relations. Sparks (1994)
believes that these seven strategies are effective ways to prepare
teachers "to meet the needs of children from diverse cultural and
social groups" (p.61). In addition, she observed that for these
strategies to work "schools must embrace the principles of
multicultural education to respond to a society that is changing"
(p.61).

After an extensive literature review,
Novick (1996) summarized a number of commitments and competencies that
she considered to be crucial for improving student learning: (1) high
expectations for all students; (2) a commitment to learn from and about
children; (3) building on the strengths and experiences children bring
to school; (4) giving wider choices and more power to teachers; and (5)
developing schools as a caring community. She feels that the first step
in culturally responsive teaching is to engage in self-reflective
analysis of one’s attitudes and beliefs about teaching culturally
different children (Novick, 1996).

Daya S. Sandhu (1994) proposed a
three-step model for developing skills and attitudes crucial for
culturally responsive teaching. The three steps of awareness,
acceptance, and action suggest a number of teacher initiated behaviors
to manage diversity and encourage interactions that are enhanced by
difference (p. 16). The awareness step includes an important dimension
that requires teachers to examine their own beliefs, values, and
behaviors that may hinder or facilitate the process of student learning.
The key role and responsibility of teachers in mediating cultures in
their classrooms is greatly emphasized in this approach.

Working with preservice teachers, Lynne
M. Hudson, David A. Bergin, and Carolyn F. Chryst (1993) developed a
framework with four key components intended to enhance culturally
relevant experiences for their preservice teachers. Their four key
aspects are: (1) building the cultural knowledge base; (2) a reciprocal
sociocultural model; (3) practicing models of culturally responsive
teaching; and (4) cross-cultural field experiences supervised by
mentors. They concluded that these experiences "empowered the
teachers to transform their practices" to become culturally
responsive teachers. This was the only culturally responsive practice
that has emerged from the experiences of teacher educators working
closely with preservice teachers. It may, therefore, be the most
relevant approach for preparing teachers for cultural diversity.

In an ethnographic study of teacher
behaviors, Annette Hemmings (1994) observed that culturally responsive
teachers: (1) showed sensitivity to students’ life experiences; (2)
aligned curriculum with home cultures of students; and (3) organized
learning activities in conjunction with student’s social interactional
styles. According to Hemmings, culturally responsive teachers not only
made genuine attempts to know their students but also kept open
communication channels with them. Further, Hemmings observed that such
teachers "listened to students, and took careful note of their
lifestyles, social identities, and especially their expectations for
teachers" (p.21).

In another recent study involving 40
student teachers and 26 cooperating teachers , Kathleen Gormley, Peter
McDermontt, Julia Rothenberg, and John Hammer (1995) found that neither
student teachers nor their cooperating teachers thought or reflected on
the interaction between culture and teaching. The survey data analysis
of the study indicated that cooperating teachers were generally more
ethnocentric than student teachers while responding to issues of
bilingual education and cultural diversity. They emphasized that
"teachers in this multicultural society must learn to teach and
construct learning activities through children’s cultures—doing
otherwise will be tragic for children, families, and our
communities" (p.25).

Building a cultural knowledge base and
engaging in self-reflective activity are considered crucial steps for
teachers to develop learning activities designed to establish strong
connections with students’ home cultures. Self-reflection and
transformation of one’s attitudes and beliefs is in no way a small and
easy task, as Lisa Delpit (1988) poignantly describes:

We do not really see through our eyes
or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs
on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment and it is not
easy. It is painful as well, because it means turning yourself inside
out, giving up your own sense who you are and being willing to see
yourself in the unflattering light of anther’s angry gaze. We must
learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down
in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our
consciousness. (p. 297)

Let us not forget the fact that it must
be even more excruciating and painful for children to feel their world
turned upside down when educators fail to develop culturally relevant
classrooms. In culturally insensitive environments children are less
likely to feel welcomed and may experience less of themselves, as Myrna
W. Ganter (1997) observes:

Students know when teachers think less
of them, and they retaliate by misbehaving and being disrespectful in
the classroom. It is important to remember that all of us respond
better when treated with dignity and respect. (p. 45)

Classroom teachers must then realize that
they play a key role in creating a learning environment where respect is
a rule rather than an exception for all children.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Rear
View

Culturally responsive teaching practices
reviewed for this inquiry seem to encompass and emphasize the following
key features:

Stresses respect for diversity to
engage the motivation of all learners.

Creates a safe, inclusive, and
respectful learning environment.

Integrates responsive teaching
practices into all disciplines.

Transforms curriculum to promote
social justice and equity in society.

The development of an attitude of respect
for diversity is seen as the beginning and end of all learning
experiences in a culturally responsive environment. A great deal of
consensus exists among educators and researchers that a transformative
curriculum promotes equity in classrooms as it questions the basic
premises and assumptions of school knowledge. It is expected that a
transformative curriculum will provide learning opportunities for
children to enhance their critical thinking skills, which in turn will
enable them to analyze their situation and transform it with the
language of possibility.

The following conditions were identified
from the literature reviewed for this study as critical elements of
culturally responsive practices. Each of the critical conditions is
followed by the source for the concept:

The literature , reviewed for this
inquiry, did not offer a conceptual linkage of personal culture,
microculture, and macroculture in a way that indicates their
relationships and dynamic influence on each other. Hence, a framework
that vividly indicates the inter-relatedness and ever-changing nature of
relationships among different levels of culture is proposed in this
article to further the understanding of the complexity of culturally
responsive teaching. Rather than being discrete parts, they are shown
here as closely interrelated and continuously interacting conditions.

The framework integrates salient features
of culturally responsive practices reviewed as a part of this inquiry.
However, this framework recognizes the central and critical role of the
teacher in creating a classroom that respects diversity and ensures the
self-worth of all children as conditions essential for culturally
responsive teaching. The framework shows the interrelationships between
three levels of culture: personal, microculture, and macroculture. It
considers the personal cultural identity as a pool of constructs,
values, beliefs, and attitudes—many of which may be part of
microcultural groups one may belong to. Microcultural groups are in turn
influenced by the macroculture. The framework also makes the assumption
that some of the constructs one associates with may have negative
connotations with respect to different cultural groups.

This framework is predicated on the
following assumptions:

Being closest to learners, teachers
play a key role in reducing and challenging cultural bias in
classrooms.

Teacher’s on-going self-appraisal
of their own attitudes, beliefs about different cultural groups is
critical so that cultural bias is not allowed to permeate
curriculum.

Inclusion of different cultural
roles, perspectives, and literature into the curriculum leads to
respect and appreciation for diversity.

Positive cultural identify
affirmation of children may lead them to become motivated to succeed
in classroom.

Respect for diversity, caring and
inclusive classroom and self-esteem are interdependent.

The process of becoming culturally
responsive educator is a dynamic, cyclic, and continuous one.

As Mary Louise Gomez (1993) suggests, no
single multicultural activity, however profound it may be, is sufficient
to prepare teachers to meet the challenges of working with culturally
diverse students. Rather than relying on the magic of one diversity
activity, the process of becoming a culturally responsive practitioner
requires teachers to gain a multitude of experiences in culturally
diverse school settings over a long period of time. Additionally,
on-going reflective thinking about these experiences is a critical
aspect of one’s ability to develop cultural sensitivity which,
hopefully, will result in curricular decisions to engage all learners in
meaningful and inclusive ways. It is important to reiterate that
self-reflection and transformation of one’s attitude and beliefs is in
no way a small and easy task. Yet, it is a crucial one to ensure the
kind of cultural metamorphosis that will enable teachers to create
culturally responsive learning environments for all children.

Conclusions

This literature review brings to the
forefront problems and issues that researchers and scholars consider
crucial for developing culturally responsive teaching in the learning
environment of our schools. Educators’ attitudes play a vital role
either in empowering or disabling learning for students from culturally
diverse backgrounds. The effectiveness of culturally responsive
classroom practices depends upon the way minority and majority
relationships are perceived at societal, community, and school levels.

This inquiry highlights issues and
suggestions that teacher education scholars consider to be critical for
preparing teachers for diversity. This study should therefore help
teacher education programs to develop campus and classrooms experiences
for prospective teachers that will effectively prepare new teachers with
attitudes, skills, and knowledge to enhance their ability to function
effectively in culturally diverse schools. The critical elements of
culturally responsive pedagogy as identified should help teacher
educators to provide curricular experiences that will prepare
prospective teacher to teach the children of "Others" in a
responsive and sensitive way. Finally, this article proposes a holistic
conceptual framework that provides a way to link culturally responsive
teaching practices within the larger context of different levels of
culture.

There is great need to identify effective
ways to prepare teachers who will implement culturally responsive
practices that will engage and motivate all children while allowing and
encouraging those children to affirm their cultural identity in a
positive manner. An equally important area is the need to identify
effective ways to alter attitudes of teachers so that they are willing
to reflect upon and change as appropriate their long-held views about
teaching, culture, and learning. Researchers must undertake more short
and long-term case studies with the view to developing powerful teaching
practices. At the same time, it is important to study how race, culture,
language, and gender intersect to influence teaching practices. The key
to meeting the needs of all culturally different students may lie in
developing even more effective culturally responsive teaching strategies
that ensure curricular relevance and excellence for all learners.

Glomb, N. (1996). Do social skills
programs accommodate cultural diversity? A review of secondary
curricula. Paper presented at the Annual International Convention of the
Council for Exceptional Children, Orlando, FL, April 1-5. (ERIC Document
Reproduction Service No. ED 395 419).

Hemmings, A. (1994). Culturally
responsive teaching: When and how high school teachers should cross
cultural boundaries to reach students. Paper presented at the American
Educational Research Association Conference, New Orleans, LA, April 4-8.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 376242)

National Center for Education Statistics.
(1994). Achieving world class standards: The challenge for education
teachers. Washington,DC: Office of the Educational Research &
Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.